Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni on November 20, 2024 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Thomas Cuesta | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni made a surprise visit to Mar-a-Lago on Sunday, his second meeting with incoming President Donald Trump since winning the U.S. election in November.
During a briefing with reporters during the meeting in Florida, Trump called Meloni an “amazing woman… who really took Europe by storm.”
Meanwhile, melon, Posted on X She had a “great night” with Trump, according to a Google translation of her post, adding that she was “ready to work together.”
She previously spoke with the president-elect during Notre Dame’s reopening in early December.
This mutual admiration means Meloni is well-positioned to position herself as Trump’s key ally in Europe. Her transatlantic effort comes at a complicated time for fellow European heavyweights Germany and France, whose leaders are grappling with domestic political challenges and both facing criticism from Trump.
Meloni has plenty of reasons to curry favor with the incoming administration, especially Trump’s threat of tariffs on Europe. During his re-election campaign, the former president Threaten to impose 10% tariff The United States is the EU’s largest export trading partner.
For Italy, the cost could be huge.
A study by European risk analysis firm Prometeia calculated that a 10% import tariff could cost the Italian economy up to $7 billion, as the United States is the country’s second-largest export market after Germany. Caixabank analysts estimate Italy’s exposure to the United States to be about 4% of GDP, second only to Germany’s 5%.
In addition to meeting with Trump, Meloni has been cultivating ties with Tesla boss Elon Musk, who is expected to play a key role in the new Trump administration. In an interview with Italian news outlet Corriere della Sera, she described him as “a great figure of our time”, adding that he was a “genius” who had been wrongly described as a “monster”.
